Luncheon and Monthly Meetings

June 7, 2017 Wednesday

June 2017 Luncheon Program Summary

100 members and guests enjoyed catching up on CWAJ activities, including a short presentation by the Long Range Advisory Task Force on the present state of the membership, and listening to the luncheon presentation by Andreas Preuss, a stringed instruments craftsman.

Our guest speaker spoke about the legacy of Stradivari and about the history of research into the secrets behind the sound quality of the instruments he crafted. Modern science itself had not revealed answers, so many have turned to alchemy, the science of the time of Stradivari, to recreate his mindset. Seven secrets or steps were found necessary to be met before moving through the process of creating optimal sound construction. As a whole, alchemy teaches us to learn from observations; so this means that if we learn to believe what we hear, we can make superior instruments. Hence, the topic of his talk – “Do we hear what we believe or believe what we hear?

We were then treated to a sampling played on a quality instrument and another of inferior quality for us to ‘hear’ the sound quality difference. Accompanist Eriko Iso then played Kreisler’s Recitativo and Scherzo-Caprice for Violin solo, Op. 6 and an encore piece.